Facebook to Acquire Instagram

Facebook on April 9, 2012 announced its biggest acquisition ever by offering Instagram, a social network site revolved around photography, $1 billion. Instagram has 30 million users who upload more than 5 million photos a day, even though it was available only for Apple devices until last week, when the company launched an Android app. Kevin Systrom, who founded Instagram with Mike Krieger, developed a service called the Photobox when he was a Stanford sophomore in 2004. The service caught the eye of Mark Zuckerberg, who had offered a job to Systrom. However, Systrom refused the offer, and continued to finish his study. He then started another service called Burbn, which allows people post photos and other updates. Burbn was never a hit, only a few hundred users used the service to upload a lot of photos. So, Systrom and his team created a stripped down and sleeker version of Burbn, called the Instagram, for the iPhone.